I'm a complete newbie to water cooling so I don't even know if it is possible to do what I want.

I don't know if you are better off getting separate cooling for everything or getting some big cooling solution.

I'd like water cooling for the a motherboard with a haswell CPU hopefully they'll have something with 9 slots like this http://www.gigabyte.com/products/produc ... id=3434#ovI'll probably end up with a couple of 780 GTX cards - chances are they'll be 3 slots each based on what I've seenI have 4 spindle drives and 2 SSD drive connected to a lsi 9265 - 1 slot1 Creative Sound Blaster Z - 1 slot

My priorities are in the following order1 quiet and reliable2 no maintenance3 simple

I probably missed some details needed to answer my question so feel free to let me know what I need to fill in.

I'll need a different case as I'll need something for xl-atx. My current is the following which I love for the drop slot on the top. http://www.coolermaster-usa.com/product ... ct_name=CM 690 II Advanced (USB 3.0 version) I'm not sure if any cases are more suited than others for water cooling but would appreciate any feedback there as well. I realize that my choice of cases for xl-atx motherboards will be limited.

I currently have a scythe ninja for my CPU which has been nice and quite but I'm curious if I could make my system even quieter. The hard drives generate a good amount of heat but the video cards generate an incredible amount of heat. I can't use SLI as I don't have enough slots on my motherboard because of the 2 and 3 slot coolers on my 580 cards combined with the SAS controller and the sound card - it leaves no space between cards so they overheat in SLI.

If you want to try watercooling out of personal curiosity or you want to do some heavy overclocking, the go for it, its very fun part of building and testing a PC, but if this are your priorieties,

Quote:

1 quiet and reliable2 no maintenance3 simple

Aircooling in most cases will be quieter, i never seen a quiet pump. Reliable, aircooler has less part, its pratically just a fan, while on the water cooling you will have the fan or fans, the pump, the rads, resorvoir etc, even on prebuilt, you will still have more parts and the risk of introducing water to an electric ambient, the risk of rust and leaks over time... etc.

Prebuilts like Corsair H100i are nice, but big air coolers like Noctua NH-D14 / Thermalrigth Silver Arrow are up to par with it, and less noise, less moving parts, less risk of failure. So if you want to go with watercooling without going too deep, check Swiftech H220 Compact Drive II Plug-and-Play Liquid Cooling System, its a prebuilt (not 100% maintaince free), but you can grow on it, you can later add rads or introduce your GPUs, motherboard heatsinks, etc, its performance is much better also than any prebuilt on the market.

With that said there are tons of people that go for it, and are happy, its a hobby in its own, and they have great success, but the for me its more for performance and overclocking heavily than Quiet/reliable setup. Now if you already entering watercooling, why not cool the gpus with it also, you already introduced the pump noise, might as well have the gpus cooled by the water loop, and avoid the extra fans on the each gpu and the heat inside the case that the gpus will generate, would be better to have the heat being dissipated by the rads where you can have 120mm fans that wont interfere with the width of the cards, and this will open almost all standard cases, as you wont need a huge case, as the gpu would not be triple slot. A mobo like Asus Maximus VI Extreme coudl fit twin GTX780 + dedicated LSI card + dedicated soundcard, still on ATX factor, with a fractal design define R4 and just open the moduvents on top to add the rad, the R4 will also have enough space for all your hdds. On the event that you will want a case with more space, then look into Antec P280 Black Super Mid Tower Computer Case (has space on top for 240mm rad and supports XL-ATX mobos) or Fractal Design Define XL R2 (similar to the R4 just bigger and supports E-ATX and XL-ATX mobos).

Good to know. I really thought water coolers were supposed to be quieter. I don't want to overclock, I just want really quiet and to have SLI video cards that are quiet. I love games like Crysis 3 but they tend to really crank the fans on the video cards and they still run HOT.

Last edited by boe on Fri May 17, 2013 9:18 am, edited 1 time in total.

A good watercool setup will be cooler than the best air cooler in the market, but on the prebuilts like H100 have similar performance to what are the best air cooler (thermalright silver arrow, Noctua ND-14, Prolimatech Genesis, etc). But quieter and reliable, i would still go for air.

A good watercool setup will be cooler than the best air cooler in the market, but on the prebuilts like H100 have similar performance to what are the best air cooler (thermalright silver arrow, Noctua ND-14, Prolimatech Genesis, etc). But quieter and reliable, i would still go for air.

Thanks again. I meant to say quieter. Since I don't overclock, I guess there is no need to me to over complicate things although I might go with video cards that have artic coolers on them as they seem to be in the same sound arena and they are by far the hottest thing in my system. Both numbers are pretty close sound and temp - but in SLI they really do throw some heat.

First, if all we are talking about is the CPU, yes, just air cool it, and ignore the message below.

I built a H20-320 cooled system just last summer. The pump on this system is suppose to be very load. First, you can't hear the pump running if ANY fan is running, even at <5V (these are very quiet fans). Just my GPU alone would be louder than my entire system if air cooled. (main reason I did water, just couldn't stand the noise anymore)

You are correct on the cooler system. I can't get my CPU or GPU over about 45-50 C, running prime95 and a GPU torture test at the same time. (i7-3930K + GTX-680 w/slight oc)

Second, reliable: you are adding a single point of true failure, the water pump. On a air cooled system, you have the same point, the CPU fan. Even with the fans off, my system at won't overheat (did that when trying to "set" my thermal paste), and even if it started to, modern CPU/MBs shut themselves down, if too hot. As for leaks, that's something you check for before applying power. I've never had a leak on a water cooled system. (Not saying I haven't spilled water, but that's my fault, not the cooling system. I've also damaged things by dropping the heavy CPU coolers on them) Rust??? I think you've been buy from the wrong company, nobody uses steel (unless stainless) in water cooling!!! Also, the better pumps have a "RPM" output, to tell you the pump is running.

Also, with regard to reliability, don't forget the 10 degree rule. This applies to all electronics, not just caps. So just keeping the CPU cooler, makes it more reliable, not less!

As for the OP, water cooling just isn't simple. Whatever you do, if you do go with water, get the BIGGEST case you can. It's a true pain working with tubing in tight spaces. (unless you have tiny hands - my first water cooled system was a mini-ITX, what a PITA, even with the rad outside)

Overall, I'm very happy with my system, though in hindsight, I'd have added a few more bells and whistles, if I was redoing it.

Just like you, I wanted a silent gaming machine.I have an Asus gtx680. Which makes noise as soon as I start playing a game. I don't think there is any other option than watercooling.

I started with my old CPU waterblock and a new GPU waterblock. Using my old Resorator1 reservoir. I always had problems with the old Eheim pumps breaking, or starting to make a lot of noise. So I bought a heavier Eheim pump. Turns out that didn't fit in my reservoir. So I decided to go for an external pump. I bought a Laing DDC-1T.

Make sure you research what pump you buy. The Laing DDC-1T made more noise than I expected. Maybe there are more silent pumps. (There's a website called Martin's Liquid Lab which has a lot of good info). But it seems all pumps are kinda equally loud.

I messed around with fan-controllers, to try and undervolt my pump. But the big problem is, my pump won't start unless it has 12V. For at least 10 seconds. I bought a fan-controller that first gives 12V for a few seconds, then drops down to lower voltage. But that didn't reliably started my pump. In the end I attached my pump to the PWR fan header on my motherboard. And controlled it with Speedfan. That works great ! I configured windows (task scheduler) to start Speedfan 30 seconds after bootup. By that time, my pump runs fine. I even configured Speedfan to increase pumpspeed when things slowly heat up. My pump would run 3500 rpm at full speed. It now runs 2200 rpm normally. Going up to 2800 rpm under load (games, chess engine, etc), and 3500 rpm once it gets really hot. This really helps keeping the noise down.

I also put in a few lowspeed case-fans (500 rpm).

The remaining problem will then be the HDDs. They make a lot noise while seeking. Which can be fixed by hanging them in suspension. But they also make spinning noise. Which, imho, can not be fixed. The solution (after a lot of messing around) for me was: 1) buy a 256GB SSD for Window + Users folder + currently played games. Then I bought a NAS for 120 euros, and put my 2x2GB HDDs in there (for films, music, and games I am not currently playing).

Oh, and I bought a Fanless 500W PSU too. Super Flower/Kingwin/Rosewill. Review is on SPCR.

Lots of works. Especially to figure it out. And it cost me more than expected. 190 euro for the SSD. 160 euro for the PSU. 120 euro for the NAS. 75 euro for 5 fans. 80 euro for gpu-block. 60 euro for the pump. 35 euro for a radiator (my Reserator would take a long time to cool down, once heated up, so I added a 240mm radiator). Etc, etc. Not sure if I would have bothered if I had known in advance that this project would cost me close to 1000 euro.

But I do have an almost silent machine (i5-3570K and gtx680). Even when under heavy load. So I did accomplish my goal. And as a side effect, it seems to be very cool.

Lots of works. Especially to figure it out. And it cost me more than expected. 190 euro for the SSD. 160 euro for the PSU. 120 euro for the NAS. 75 euro for 5 fans. 80 euro for gpu-block. 60 euro for the pump. 35 euro for a radiator (my Reserator would take a long time to cool down, once heated up, so I added a 240mm radiator). Etc, etc. Not sure if I would have bothered if I had known in advance that this project would cost me close to 1000 euro.

But I do have an almost silent machine (i5-3570K and gtx680). Even when under heavy load. So I did accomplish my goal. And as a side effect, it seems to be very cool.

Thanks, I've decided to just get a 780 GTX (either EVGA ACX or an Asus DirectCU) for now and then I'll build the rest of my system with a second 780 when the new LGA 2011 motherboards with X99 chips come out later this year or early next.

But I do have an almost silent machine (i5-3570K and gtx680). Even when under heavy load. So I did accomplish my goal. And as a side effect, it seems to be very cool.

I just ordered a Silverstone FT02 case, and am considering water cooling for silent gaming. It looks like it can be done! Thanks for the post.

The FT02 is still today the best air cooling case in the market, but for watecooling, i would have gone another route, like Phantek Entho Primo. THe FT02 can be build around water but long gpus might have trouble on it + rads. One that i would recommend you is to either go with Asus motherboard + AISuite III / FanXpert2 to tame the 180s or get a fan controller to lower them, at stock rpms they are very loud.

But I do have an almost silent machine (i5-3570K and gtx680). Even when under heavy load. So I did accomplish my goal. And as a side effect, it seems to be very cool.

I just ordered a Silverstone FT02 case, and am considering water cooling for silent gaming. It looks like it can be done! Thanks for the post.

The FT02 is still today the best air cooling case in the market, but for watecooling, i would have gone another route, like Phantek Entho Primo. THe FT02 can be build around water but long gpus might have trouble on it + rads. One that i would recommend you is to either go with Asus motherboard + AISuite III / FanXpert2 to tame the 180s or get a fan controller to lower them, at stock rpms they are very loud.

Good luck,

My motherboard is Asus, however I might get a fan controller for them as my cpu cooler is using FanXpert to adjust the fans for the processor temperatures. I don't think I'd want to connect the 180mm fans to the same circuit.

I checked radiator clearances and it seems if you remove the fan filters and mount the 180mm fans directly to the case, there is enough room for a long video card. My card is a Radeon 7970, so it is long. I don't know if those radiators that fit are as good for low flow fans though. The triple 180mm radiator made my Magicool is 35mm, so it's a slim radiator. I know I've seen that one fit. Whether it provides enough cooling I don't know, the Phantek case definitely has a lot of space for radiators, but I don't like it quite as well. The concept of the FT02 is neat.

A lot of people use the FT02 for water cooling if you google it, but I don't know how well it works for silenced water cooling.

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